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commit to being the authentic you,
Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners.
The only thing that truly matters in public speaking is not confidence, stage presence, or smooth talking. It’s having something worth saying.
(Even in a business context where you’re genuinely making a sales pitch, your goal should be to give.
“When people sit in a room to listen to a speaker, they are offering her something extremely precious, something that isn’t recoverable once given: a few minutes of their time and of their attention. Her task is to use that time as well as possible.”
when you focus on the nature of the work that you’re doing, and the power of the ideas that infuse it, not on the org itself or its products.
The key is to present just one idea—as thoroughly and completely as you can in the limited time period.
To say something interesting you have to take the time to do at least two things:
Show why it matters . . . what’s the question you’re trying to answer, the problem you’re trying to solve, the experience you’re trying to share? Flesh out each point you make with real examples, stories, facts.
The only way the talk can truly soar is if you take your ego out of it and let yourself be a delivery vehicle for the ideas themselves.
The better question for me is, ‘What can you unpack in a meaningful way in 18 minutes?’”
So a throughline requires you first to identify an idea that can be properly unpacked in the time you have available.
An issue-based talk leads with morality. An idea-based talk leads with curiosity.
easier to pull in an audience by framing the talk as an attempt to solve an intriguing riddle rather than as a plea for them to care.
Is this a topic I’m passionate about? Does it inspire curiosity? Will it make a difference to the audience to have this knowledge? Is my talk a gift or an ask? Is the information fresh, or is it already out there? Can I truly explain the topic in the time slot allocated, complete with necessary examples? Do I know enough about this to make a talk worth the audience’s time? Do I have the credibility to take on this topic? What are the fifteen words that encapsulate my talk? Would those fifteen words persuade someone they’d be interested in hearing my talk?
five core tools that speakers use: Connection Narration Explanation Persuasion Revelation
Before you can build an idea in someone else’s mind, you need their permission.
Humans are good at forming instant judgments about other humans.
Scientists have shown that just the act of two people staring at each other will trigger mirror neuron activity that literally adopts the emotional state of the other person.
Ego emerges in lots of ways that may be truly invisible to a speaker who’s used to being the center of attention: Name-dropping Stories that seem designed only to show off Boasting about your or your company’s achievements Making the talk all about you rather than an idea others can use.
We’re born to love stories. They are instant generators of interest, empathy, emotion, and intrigue.
They need to be part of an authentic desire to connect. You’re a human. Your listeners are humans. Think of them as friends. And just reach out.
Therefore, those narrating and listening skills are likely to have been selected for as modern humans evolved. So it’s not just that we all love hearing stories. They probably helped shape how our minds share and receive information.
Unlike challenging explanations or complex arguments, everyone can relate to stories.
When it comes to sharing a story from the stage, remember to emphasize four key things: Base it on a character your audience can empathize with. Build tension, whether through curiosity, social intrigue, or actual danger. Offer the right level of detail. Too little and the story is not vivid. Too much and it gets bogged down. End with a satisfying resolution, whether funny, moving, or revealing.
If you’re going to tell a story, make sure you know why you’re telling it, and try to edit out all the details that are not needed to make your point, while still leaving enough in for people to vividly imagine what happened.
don’t want to insult the intelligence of the audience by force-feeding exactly the conclusion they must draw from the tale you’ve told.
remember this: Stories resonate deeply in every human. By giving your talk as a story or a series of related stories, you can greatly increase your connection with your listeners.
You have to expose your drafts to friends or colleagues and beg for ruthless feedback on anything they don’t understand.
this means is that some of the most important elements in a talk are the little phrases that give clues to the talk’s overall structure: “Although . . .” “One recent example . . .” “On the other hand . . .” “Let’s build on that . . .” “Playing devil’s advocate for a moment . . .” “I must just tell you two stories that amplify this finding.” “As an aside . . .” “At this point you may object that . . .” “So, in summary . . .”
when jargon terms pile up, people simply switch off.
You can’t give a powerful new idea to an audience unless you can learn how to explain. That can only be done step by step, fueled by curiosity. Each step builds on what the listener already knows. Metaphors and examples are essential to revealing how an idea is pieced together. Beware the curse of knowledge! You must be sure you’re not making assumptions that will lose your audience. And when you’ve explained something special, excitement and inspiration will follow close behind.
Persuasion means convincing an audience that the way they currently see the world isn’t quite right.
Instead of being told facts, we’ve been invited to join the process of discovery.
that the tools of economics could allow us to think differently about HIV/AIDS, but instead of just presenting an economic argument, she became a detective. She presented a slide titled FOUR THINGS WE KNOW. Taking each one in turn, she presented some surprising pieces of evidence and effectively demolished them, one by one, opening the door for her to present an alternative theory. The power of this structure is that it taps
Add an anecdote. Maybe one that reveals how you got engaged in this issue. It humanizes you. If people know why you’re passionate about the issue, they’re more likely to listen to your logic.
Persuasion is the act of replacing someone’s worldview with something better. And at its heart is the power of reason, capable of long-term impact. Reason is best accompanied by intuition pumps, detective stories, visuals, or other plausibility-priming devices.
Share with us, in accessible human language, what you were dreaming of when you started the work.
How can we link these projects together to build excitement? How can we communicate what is delightful, unexpected, or humorous about them? How can we switch the tone from “look what we’ve achieved” to “look how intriguing this is”?
Whether it’s business, science, design, or art, don’t just walk people through your work. Figure out the route that engages, intrigues, and enlightens. The route that brings in a little wonder and delight.
But the ability to paint a compelling picture of the future is truly one of the greatest gifts a speaker can bring.
And for every speaker, the following is true: Having no slides at all is better than bad slides.
what are the key elements to strong visuals? They fall into three categories: Revelation Explanatory power Aesthetic appeal
Your mind is an integrated system. Much of our world is imagined visually. If you want to really explain something new, often the simplest, most powerful way is to show and tell.
limit each slide to a single core idea.
David McCandless
Those classic PowerPoint slide decks with a headline followed by multiple bullet points of long phrases are the surest single way to lose an audience’s attention altogether.
key to explaining what I want to say? And, if so, how do I best combine them with my words so that they’re working powerfully together?
We cannot bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it’s purposeful.
Rory Sutherland
